Monday, January 21, 2013

IT WAS A GOOD DAY.

For "Seneca Falls and Selma and Stonewall"; for the idea that it's not un-American to work together and share the bounty; for saying in the face of originalists, "while these truths may be self-evident, they've never been self-executing"; and of course for the LOL Opposition:

...The tone that he set: What was it? Reading through the speech (I will be honest: I couldn’t bear to listen to it live, I just couldn’t), I was haunted by an echo. The speech reminded me of something, of someone. Who was it? Woodrow Wilson? Yes, in part. But there was another ghost in the wings...

Got it: “Peace in our time,” the president said, “requires the constant advance of those principles that our common creed describes: tolerance and opportunity; human dignity and justice.”

Now, I am as keen on tolerance and opportunity, human dignity and justice as the next gun-toting bitter-ender. But “peace in our time”? Where have we heard that before? Who was the last politician to strut across the world stage proclaiming “peace in our time”? Why, Neville Chamberlain, of course. He stepped off the plane that brought him back from his meeting with Adolf Hitler on September 30, 1938, and the crowd cheered as Chamberlain told them about his meeting with the German führer...

Similarly, Obama used the words "I" and "me" a lot, just like Marshal Petain.

UPDATE 3. Commenters including Ron Thompson point out that Chamberlain actually said "peace for our time." The quote is so commonly misrendered that I would be inclined to give Kimball a break for using the wrong version, and even for not checking out what he probably assumed was a devastating coincidence before using it -- after all, he's only hurting himself.

However, smut clyde, tigrismus, and others inform us that Benjamin Disraeli and John F. Kennedy used "peace in our time," which means by the ancient conservative law of I'm Rubber You're Glue that they are now both retroactively Hitler. I hope Kimball's happy now!

66 comments:

from la willis' ("beauty in unexpected places," according to her twitter profile) blog: We must protest, however, that a well-written tweet can be a work of art in the "Less is more" sense.

INDEED.

also, bonus points to sissy for uncovering the terrible gramsican conspiracy at the heart of the obama presidency and the rising american electorate, and i guess the failure of kantian positivism; i only wish i knew where the tens of millions of other voters were getting their little red books, because i know i've tried reading gramsci, and it only left me wanting that $11 back.

Yes, what could be more objectionable than sustainable energy sources? I know nothing about Li'l Miz Willis, but the only women called "Sissy" that I have ever met were from coal-rich places like Kentucky. I can imagine that Sissy met Massey and is now pissy.

When Obama lamented that the fearful in the hinterlands were wedded to "guns and God," he missed one--gasoline.

To the Sissies of the country, sustainable energy = takin' away our gas. They see this as just another power grab by the lefties, rather than as an inevitability of consumption (and is a pretty good look into the way the right wing thinks--you know it's true, windmills are a commie hippie plot).

Of course, without oil, there's less reason for the U.S. to encircle the globe with its military, and that's a big bummer for the wingnutz, too. They'd rather spend the country into penury being the 21st century equivalent of the French Foreign Legion than plan for the future.

My mother thought whole wheat bread was a communist plot. Clearly we are still under the umbrella of the Cold War and its attendant idiocies and some still feel that hippies are an existential threat. It's still too weird for me. How do these people get through their days? Tie-dye sets them off.

What's most amusing is how they're all "Free market, fuck yeah!" until they wind up on the short end of the stick, which is when the government should go kill some Ay-rabs or punch some hippie enviromentalists, like that'll make gas $1.59/gallon again. Jesus fuck, you morons, why don't you ask yourselves why the head of Exxon-Mobil earned $850 per minute one year?

Well, this goes right back to Reagan. He was the president who ripped the solar panels off the White House and personally torpedoed all alternative energy research at DOE. Since then, it's been an article of faith among the faithful that any energy that doesn't involve frying dinosaurs or splitting atoms is unAmerican.

I'm really curious as to who, exactly, is supposed to be the Hitler to Obama's Chamberlain. Putin? For all of the fantastic corruption and oligarchapalooza of present-day Russia, I don't think so. China? They're holding our markers, anyway. Iran? Except for the fading-post-election sound of the drumbeat of the let's-have-another-war fanatics, not so much, really. The General Islamofascist Menace? Well, lacking in a certain figurehead, thanks to the POTUS. Really, the only dictators that are left are second-rate Bond villain types, and Kim Jong Un isn't even up to that standard, compared to his dad. This is really a Jonah Goldberg-level of laziness here.

Cabbagemallet is right in one sense, though: Fox News viewers, writers of deranged Talibornagain newsletters, etc, will almost certainly not use any actual lines from this speech in their fabricated horseshit about how he spent the whole speech apologizing for America, openly disrespecting God and the Constitution, and calling for the nationalization of all industry, before wrapping it up with "Allahu Ackbar." I can't wait to hear my father funnel the choicest totally made-up dumbshittery to me tonight. I'd like it even more if he were doing it sarcastically.

Yup, that would be it. That one will probably be evergreen for decades.

Well, lacking in a certain figurehead, thanks to the POTUS.

The General Islamofascist Menace wasn't led by OBL, who wasn't really all that important, and besides, President Obama didn't really have anything to do with killing him. Unlike when Ronald Reagan personally tore down the Berlin Wall. Anyway, the General Islamofascist Menace is carried on in the person of every Muslim in the world, with Palestinian Christians thrown in for good measure, since most of these people are too goddamn fucking stupid to realize they even exist.

China? They're holding our markers, anyway.

Uh, HJ, I love you like the sibling who looks like David Bowie I never had, but let's not reinforce wingnut talking points, 'm'kay? All foreign governments combined hold about a third of our public debt, and though China is usually the biggest single player in that category, it's unsecured debt, so it's not like they could take Kansas if we repudiated it when push came to shove. Although a deal for Kansas could certainly be arranged in a spirit of comity and a player to be named later.

Incidentally, I posed this same question over at NRO, and got this answer: "Maybe he's both. Throw Mussolini in too. Kind of like a three-in-one doctrine of the trinity. From hell." Bless their hearts.

I loved it. Because it was a direct response to a guy who deserves it. Deadspin treated Trump's thanks with all the dignity Trump deserves. Getting all butch about a press release about sustainable energy? Well, milage may vary.

I don't particularly care about civility, in that I don't care about civility at all. But incivility, in directness and in creativity, has to have a point.

When I google Sissy she comments on a lot of posts complaining about mean, uncivil liberal behavior with statements about how dumb liberals are. Maybe her dissertation on the nuance and deep meaning behind "Suck it" is coming soon, but until then I'm going to continue to think her an idiot and an asshole. God knows we've got them, too, but that doesn't make her any smarter.